Fish Place

I went to the Marine Science institute in Redwood city down by the bay. I didn't expect it to be soooooo cool. We got to do all sorts of things that we wouldn't get to do at other places. We did things like.......



...pulling in a huge fish net from the bay. We pulled and tugged at the nasty muddy rope for the huge green net that we got little anchovies in. We got to run and put them into a bucket. We pet the fish with a 2 finger touch like a closed up peace sign. The smaller fish we pet with with just a 1 finger touch.



Next we collected plankton with a quite smaller net that had a bottle attached to the end. We dragged the net through the murky bay water. The lady in charge brought the bottle inside and put a few drops of water under the microscope on a slide ( not the kind on a playground ). Everyone saw the small zoo-plankton and even smaller phyto-plankton now visible under the magnificent microscope. You might want to think next time when your in any uncleaned water you taste one drop you are eating millions of plankton



Then we went into a room with a medium sized circular tank. there were leopard sharks and bat rays in there. A hungry shark jumped out of the tank because he thought it was feeding time. The people only feed them once or twice a week because they are going to release them after a while and they want the sharks to stay healthy. The worker put a shark aside so we could pet him. I didn't want to pet them I hesitated for awhile and touched him and he jerked pretty hard so I flung my hand out and didn't dare to touch him again.



We went on to the dock and we did this mud clamp thing. We pulled it up and pushed it to the water it sank to the bottom and came up with a bunch of mud. We repeated the process once more and got more mud. We looked through the mud and found shells and things. We pledged a solom oath with mud on our fingers. When the oath was finished the worker said to put mud on our face and we would be in the mud club. Most people did it included me. Some people made cat whiskers that also including me. I was grossed out after I stopped to think what was in the mud. I wanted to wipe off my face,but it was to late the mud would just smear. I ended up waiting 'till the mud dried and crumbled off.



We saw a few crabs and things in a tiny little boxish thing. Lastly we petted fish in a bucket and said which one we thought it was on a poster. then we took a long bus ride home.

It was such a great field trip. We did many things that no one else could do. It was soooooooooooooo sooooooooooo fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!